Violence Towards Government Workers And The Link To Defusing Skills

Q: Is physical violence towards government employees a major issue these days?

Robert: Indeed. Over the last ten to fifteen years, since I've been training staff in government, there has been an increased concern about physical violence aimed at public sector staff, and a lot of offices have installed security mechanisms, like enclosed bullet proof glass, and/or have security guards.

Q: Is that across the board for government functions and offices?

Robert: The concern is across the board, but offices related to child welfare, social services, are of particular concern due to the volatility of their clients. Also, since a number of government functions involve actually going to the "customers" turf (i.e. inspectors of various types), that's an issue too, since field workers are not protected by anything the "home office" can offer.

Q: Do we have numbers on how often physical violence happens to government workers?

Robert: There's some, but my experience is that the violence is severely under-reported, since the numbers would only reflect incidents that reported to authorities. We have some material on the numbers: Report On Violence Towards Federal Government Staff and OPSEU Report On Violence and Verbal Abuse Aimed At Government Employees .

But let me share something shocking. Of the thousands that have attended my defusing citizens seminars, at least forty percent have experienced at least one incident of unwanted and aggressive physical contact. Usually, this contact does not cause injury, thank goodness, but the numbers are pretty astounding, and the stress, trauma and time involved in these incidents is huge.

Q: WOW! So do you think that staff who develop their defusing anger skills will experience less physical violence?

Robert: I wish I had hard numbers on that, but I don't so I can't make that claim. I think that's the case, because of the nature of angry behavior and that it seems that most of the violence doesn't just come from out of the blue. Usually there's verbal interactions between employee and "customer" that escalate until the point where, let's say a citizen pushes the employee, or grabs a shirt...that kind of thing. We call that the escalation cycle (click here for a picture of the cycle, explained.)

So, it stands to reason that if we can cut off that escalation during the verbal interactions, there will be less likelihood of physical violence. But I can't make the claim because we don't have research on this issue.

Q: But there will always be situations, violent ones perhaps that could not be avoided even if staff were well trained in the defusing process?

Robert: Yes, of course. Government staff deal frequently with people who are distraught, emotional, even desperate about their situations that may be entirely unrelated to government. For example, an individual frightened about the health or welfare of his child is so terrified, he might strike out towards the nearest target, regardless of what any government employee might say or do. While defusing techniques are powerful, they won't work in all situations, or with everyone.

I suspect, though, that the PROBABILITIES are in favor of them having the effect of reducing violence.

Q: Thanks, Robert for talking about the potential links between defusing techniques and violence. It's obviously an important issue facing government.